News-Record.com

The first and most obvious reason this movie is so good that you've got to go see it right now is Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark - brilliant, damaged, funny and over-his-head for most of the movie, he somehow brings together the best bits of the character's more than forty year history, discards the stuff that hasn't worked and imbued him with a wit and frenetic energy that has rarely come across so clearly.

It would have been so easy to get Stark wrong. Some years ago, when it was rumored that Tom Cruise wanted the role, I could very clearly see it becoming a train wreck. Downey saves the day by giving us a character who is, as he freely admits, really bad hero material. But because he's screwed up so much of his life as an alcoholic ladies man and weapons designer -- and caused so much suffering -- he's got to try to put it all back together.

The rest of the cast isn't lying down either -- Gweneth Paltrow could have been sad and pathetic as Stark's secretary/quasi-love interest, but instead she's awkward, feisty and just what the character needs to balance him. Terrance Howard shows a potential as Stark's friend and government liaison that I can't wait to see realized in the sequel. And Jeff Bridges was somehow evil and endearing all at once as Stark's rival Obadiah Stane.

The only real criticism of the film I've heard so far is that the beginning -- Stark's life before Iron Man and super-hero origin -- drag a bit. The same could (and has been) said about Batman Begins -- but that's just what you have to expect from a super-hero film when you start from the beginning. If you don't understand the character's motivation and life before adventuring, you can't get invested.

A word about the special effects sequences: they're surprisingly effective. Strangely, in the trailer for the upcoming Incredible Hulk film the same basic special effects technology didn't do it for me at all. The monster still looked as ridiculous and improbable as it did in the last Hulk film -- which is to say Lou Ferrigno was more believable as the Hulk in the old TV series. But a suit of non-organic armor rendered in the same manner is much more impressive.

N&R columnist Jeri Rowe asked me today if I'd let him know if the Iron Man movie was safe for kids. I'm going to say yes -- but not small ones. A number of terrorists very clearly die at the hands of the hero, he drinks like a fish throughout, there's a good bit of gun play and a few sexually suggestive scenes and bits of dialog.

All in all though, nothing that's going to turn your kid into a maniac. They may just learn that nobody's perfect, though -- and that the important part is trying to do the right thing anyway.